Magnus Carlsen became a three-time world champion for the third time in his career



CNN

Magnus Carlsen won both World Rapid and World Blitz chess titles in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the last milestone of his brilliant career.

32 year old Norwegian now holds all three world chess titles – classical, rapid and blitz – for the third time in his career, while no other player has ever won both rapid and blitz titles in the same year.

“New hands will be needed soon,” joked Carlsen. Twitterposting a video of him counting his now 15 world titles on his fingers.

This is a triumphant end to Carlsen’s remarkable ten-year reign as World Classic Champion, as he has already announced that he will not be defending his title next year.

“It’s wonderful,” he said in a press release after winning two world titles in three days.

“It’s a really tough event. Yesterday it started great, but I didn’t feel like I had much energy… Yesterday I tried to make it to the second day and see if I had a chance… Today I felt a little better than yesterday and I tried to win as many games as possible.”

Rapid and blitz championships require more time than classical chess. Rapid gives each player 15 minutes + 10 seconds of extra time per turn starting at turn 1, while Blitz gives three minutes per player per game with two seconds of extra time per turn.

Carlsen won his fourth World Rapid title on Wednesday, half a point ahead of Germany’s Vincent Keimer.

He then made a dramatic entrance into the first round of the World Blitz Championship, running through the playing hall and arriving at his board two minutes and 30 seconds late, still wearing his tracksuit.

He still won the match with just 30 seconds on the clock.

“To some extent, the title Blitz is very important because it [won in a tournament with] more rounds… As for the classic championship [goes] I won it, but it wasn’t expensive enough to hold onto.”

Hikaru Nakamura of the USA led the tournament after the first day, but ended up finishing second overall under pressure from Carlsen.

“While he was used to winning tournaments, he never won this one,” Carlsen later said in a press release. “When he started shaking a bit, I knew I had a chance.”

However, Carlsen also faced pressure, having suffered two defeats in important moments – from the Russian Jan Nepomniachtchi and Alexei Sarana.

But he held on and eventually sealed the win by a point, ahead of Nakamura and Armenia’s Hayk M. Martirosyan in third place.